All About Coffee by William H. Ukers (best new books to read .TXT) đź“•
CHAPTER II
HISTORY OF COFFEE PROPAGATION
A brief account of the cultivation of the coffee plant in the Old World, and of its introduction into the New--A romantic coffee adventure Page 5
CHAPTER III
EARLY HISTORY OF COFFEE DRINKING
Coffee in the Near East in the early centuries--Stories of its origin--Discovery by physicians and adoption by the Church--Its spread through Arabia, Persia, and Turkey--Persecutions and Intolerances--Early coffee manners and customs Page 11
CHAPTER IV
INTRODUCTION OF COFFEE INTO WESTERN EUROPE
When the three great temperance beverages, cocoa, tea, and coffee, came to Europe--Coffee first mentioned by Rauwolf in 1582--Early days of coffee in Italy--How Pope Clement VIII baptized it and made it a truly Christian beverage--The first Europe
Read free book «All About Coffee by William H. Ukers (best new books to read .TXT) 📕» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: William H. Ukers
- Performer: -
Read book online «All About Coffee by William H. Ukers (best new books to read .TXT) 📕». Author - William H. Ukers
The painters Marilhat, Descamps, and de Tournemine have pictured café scenes; the first in his "Café sur une route de Syrie", which was shown at the Salon of 1844; the second in his "Café Turc", which figured at the Exposition of 1855; and the third in his "Café en Asia Mineure", which received honors at the Salon of 1859, and attracted attention at the Universal Exposition of 1867.
A decorative panel designed for the buffet at the Paris Opera House by S. Mazerolles was shown at the Exposition of 1878. A French artist, Jacquand, has painted two charming compositions; one representing the reading room, and the other the interior, of a café.
Many German artists have shown coffee manners and customs in pictures that are now hanging in well known European galleries. Among others, mention should be made of C. Schmidt's "The Sweets Shop of Josty in Berlin", 1845; Milde's "Pastor Rautenberg and His Family at the Coffee Table", 1833; and his "Manager Classen and His Family at the Afternoon Coffee Table", 1840; Adolph Menzel's "Parisian Boulevard Café", 1870; Hugo Meith's "Saturday Afternoon at the Coffee Table"; John Philipp's "Old Woman with Coffee Cup"; Friedrich Walle's "Afternoon Coffee in the Court Gardens at Munich"; Paul Meyerheim's "Oriental Coffee House"; and Peter Philippi's (Dusseldorf) "Kaffeebesuch."
At the Exposition des Beaux Arts, Salon of 1881, there was shown P.A. Ruffio's picture, "Le café vient au secours de la Muse" (Coffee comes to the aid of the Muse), in which the graceful form of an oriental ewer appears.
The "Coffee House at Cairo," a canvas by Jean Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, has been much admired. It shows the interior of a typical oriental coffee house with two men near a furnace at the left preparing the beverage; a man seated on a wicker basket about to smoke a hooka; a dervish dancing; and several persons seated against the wall in the background.
The New York Historical Society acquired in 1907 from Miss Margaret A. Ingram an oil painting of the "Tontine Coffee House." It was painted in Philadelphia by Francis Guy, and was sold at a raffle, after having been admired by President John Adams. It shows lower Wall Street in 1796–1800, with the Tontine coffee house on the northwest corner of Wall and Water Streets, where its more famous predecessor, the Merchants coffee house, was located before it moved to quarters diagonally opposite.
Charles P. Gruppe's (b. 1860) painting showing General "Washington's Official Welcome to New York by City and State Officials at the Merchants Coffee House," April 23, 1789, just one week before his inauguration as first president of the United States, is a colorful canvas that has been much praised for its atmosphere and historical associations. It is the property of the author.
The art museums and libraries of every country contain many beautiful water-colors, engravings, prints, drawings, and lithographs, whose creators found inspiration in coffee. Space permits the mention of only a few.
T.H. Shepherd has preserved for us Button's, afterward the Caledonien coffee house, Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, in a water-color drawing of 1857; Tom's coffee house, 17 Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, 1857; Slaughter's coffee house in St. Martin's Lane, 1841; also, in 1857, the Lion's Head at Button's, put up by Addison and now the property of the Duke of Bedford at Woburn.
From the painting by Peter Philippi
From the painting by Ruffio
Hogarth figures in the Sam Ireland collection with several original drawings of frequenters of Button's in 1730.
Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) the great English caricaturist and illustrator, has given us several fine pictures of English coffee-house life. His "Mad Dog in a Coffee House" presents a lively scene; and his water-color of "The French Coffee House" is one of the best pictures we have of the French coffee house in London as it looked during the latter half of the eighteenth century.
During the campaign in France in 1814, Napoleon arrived one day, unheralded, in a country presbytery, where the good curé was quietly turning his hand coffee-roaster. The emperor asked him, "What are you doing there, abbé?" "Sire", replied the priest, "I am doing like you. I am burning the colonial fodder." Charlet (1792–1845) made a lithograph of the incident.
Several French poet-musicians resorted to music to celebrate coffee. Brittany has its own songs in praise of coffee, as have other French provinces. There are many epics, rhapsodies, and cantatas—and even a comic opera by Meilhat, music by Deffes, bearing the title, Le Café du Roi, produced at the Théâtre Lyrique, November 16, 1861.
Fuzelier wrote, in honor of coffee, a cantata, set to music by Bernier. This is the burden of the poet's song:
Ah coffee, what climes yet unknown,
Ignore the clear fires that thy vapors inspire!
Thou countest, in thy vast empire
Those realms that Bacchus' reign disown.
Favored liquid, which fills all my soul with delights,
Thy enchantments to life happy hours persuade,
We vanquish e'en sleep by thy fortunate aid,
Thou hast rescued the hours sleep would rob from our nights.
Favored liquid which fills all my soul with delights,
Thy enchantments to life happy hours persuade.
Oh liquid that I love,
Triumphant stream of sable,
E'en for the gods above,
Drive nectar from the table.
Make thou relentless war
On treacherous juices sly,
Let earth taste and adore
The sweet calm of the sky.
Oh liquid that I love,
Triumphant stream of sable,
E'en for the gods above,
Drive nectar from the table.
During the early vogue of the café in Paris, a chanson, entitled Coffee, reproduced here, was set to music with accompaniment for the piano by M.H. Colet, a professor of harmony at the Conservatoire. Printed in the form of a placard, and put up in cafés, it received the approbation of, and was signed by, de Voyer d'Argenson, at that time (1711) lieutenant of police. The poetry is not irreproachable. It can hardly be attributed to any of the well known poets of the time; but rather to one of those bohemian rimesters that wrote all too abundantly on all sorts of subjects. It is the development of a theory concerning the properties of coffee and the best method of making it. It is interesting to note that the uses of advertising were known and appreciated in Paris in 1711; for in the chanson there appears the name and address of one Vilain, a merchant, rue des Lombards, who was evidently in fashion at that period. The translation of the stanza reproduced is as follows:
Coffee—A Chanson
If you, with mind untroubled,
Would flourish, day by day,
Let each day of the seven
Find coffee on your tray.
It will your frame preserve from every malady,
Its virtues drive afar, la! la!
Migrain and dread catarrh—ha! ha!
Dull cold and lethargy.
The most notable contribution to the "music of coffee," if one may be permitted the expression, is the Coffee Cantata of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) the German organist and the most modern composer of the first half of the eighteenth century. He hymned the religious sentiment of protestant Germany; and in his Coffee Cantata he tells in music the protest of the fair sex against the libels of the enemies of the beverage, who at the time were actively urging in Germany that it should be forbidden women, because its use made for sterility! Later on, the government surrounded the manufacture, sale, and use of coffee with many obnoxious restrictions, as told in chapter VIII.
Bach's Coffee Cantata is No. 211 of the Secular Cantatas, and was published in Leipzig in 1732. In German it is known as Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht (Be silent, do not talk). It is written for soprano, tenor, and bass solos and orchestra. Bach used as his text a poem by Piccander. The cantata is really a sort of one-act operetta—a jocose production representing the efforts of a stern parent to check his daughter's propensities in coffee drinking, the new fashioned habit. One seldom thinks of Bach as a humorist; but the music here is written in a mock-heroic vein, the recitatives and arias having a merry flavor, hinting at what the master might have done in light opera.
The libretto shows the father Schlendrian, or Slowpoke, trying by various threats to dissuade his daughter from further indulgence in the new vice, and, in the end, succeeding by threatening to deprive her of a husband. But his victory is only temporary. When the mother and the grandmother indulge in coffee, asks the final trio, who can blame the daughter?
Bach uses the spelling coffee—not kaffee. The cantata was sung as recently as December 18, 1921, at a concert in New York by the Society of the Friends of Music, directed by Arthur Bodanzky.
Lieschen, or Betty, the daughter, has a delightful aria, beginning, "Ah, how sweet coffee tastes—lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter far than muscatel wine!" the opening bars of which are reproduced on page 598.
As the text is not long, it is printed here in its entirety.
CHARACTERS
Tenor (Recitative): Be silent, do not talk, but notice what will happen! Here comes old Slowpoke with his daughter Betty. He's grumbling like a common bear—just listen to what he says.
(Enter Slowpoke muttering): What vexatious things one's children are! A hundred thousand naughty ways! What I tell my daughter Betty might as well be told to the moon! (Enter Betty.)
Slowpoke (Recitative): You naughty child, you mischievous girl, oh when can I have my way—give up your coffee!
Betty: Dear father, do not be so strict! If I can't have my little demi-tasse of coffee three times a day, I'm just like a dried up piece of roast goat!
Betty (Aria): Ah! How sweet coffee tastes! Lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter far than muscatel wine! I must have my coffee, and if any one wishes to please me, let him present me with—coffee!
Slowpoke (Recitative): If you won't give up coffee, young lady, I won't let you go to any wedding feasts—I won't even let you go walking!
Betty: O yes! Do let me have my coffee!
Slowpoke: What a little monkey you are, anyway! I will not let you have any whale-bone skirts of the present fashionable size!
Betty: Oh, I can easily fix that!
Slowpoke: But I won't let you stand at the window and watch the new styles!
Betty: That doesn't bother me, either. But be good and let me have my coffee!
Slowpoke: But from my hands you'll get no silver or
Comments (0)